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Tuesday, November 29, 2016

Cleve Jones is a longtime LGBT activist who once told Harvey Milk he wasn't important enough to be shot. He cofounded the San Francisco AIDS Foundation and started the AIDS Memorial Quilt. His new memoir, When We Rise, is also the title of an upcoming 8-hour, 7-episode ABC miniseries written by Dustin Lance Black, directed by Black and Gus Van Sant, and starring Mary-Louise Parker, Whoopi Goldberg, Rosie O'Donnell, Rachel Griffiths, David Hyde Pierce and, as Jones in his later years, Guy Pearce of Memento and L.A. Confidential.Jones's interview with Terry Gross, of NPR's Fresh Air, was broadcast today. Below, a trailer for ABC's When We Rise. The miniseries will air in February.

Below: a previously unpublished AKSARBENT slide from either the 1979 or 1982 San Francisco gay day parade:

Wednesday, November 23, 2016

Above: Raymond Burr regards Robert Redford in the firstepisode of Perry Mason's fourth season, aired 09/17/1960and entitled The Case of the Treacherous Toupee

In 1970, when he died, Erle Stanley Gardner was the biggest-selling American author of the 20th century (Take that, Margaret Mitchell!), largely due to his 80 Perry Mason novels. But before that, he wrote 29 novels about a fictional private detective agency Cool and Lam.
The second installment of that series was refused by the publisher in 1939 because of because of the behavior of Gardner's character, Bertha Cool.
The Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas holds Gardener's
manuscripts. This year it discovered that second, unpublished Cool and Lam series
novel, and it has been published as an entry in the Hard Case Crime series,
which previously reissued another Cool and Lam novel, Top of the Heap.
Gardner attended the Valparaiso University School of Law in Indiana —
for one month. He was suspended when his boxing interest became a
distraction. Two years later he passed the California bar exam after
pursuing legal studies on his own.
He separated from his first wife in the early 1930s. After she died in 1968, he married Agnes Jean Bethell, his secretary since 1930.
Here's Amazon.com's description of The Knife Slipped:

Lost for more than 75 years [No it wasn't — it was hiding in plain sight exactly where one would have expected to find it — AKSARBENT], The Knife Slipped was meant to be the second book in the series, but shelved when Gardner’s publisher objected to (among other things) Bertha Cool’s tendency to “talk tough, swear, smoke cigarettes, and try to gyp people.” But this tale of adultery and corruption, of double-crosses and triple identities—however shocking for 1939—shines today as a glorious present from the past, a return to the heyday of private eyes and shady dames, of powerful criminals, crooked cops, blazing dialogue, and delicious plot twists. Donald Lam has never been cooler—not even when played by Frank Sinatra on the U.S. Steel Hour of Mystery in 1946. Bertha Cool has never been tougher. And Erle Stanley Gardner has never been better.

Tuesday, November 22, 2016

Politico has extensively documented the reactionary political activism of heiress Rebekah Mercer here and here. Below, an executive summary of the 42-year-old who home-schooled her children in an Upper West Side apartment she had fashioned from the six adjoining residences she bought.

She's a Stanford graduate with a dual degree in biology and mathematics, and a Master's in operations research. Her dad is a billionaire quantitative trading pioneer, whose right-wing foundation she runs.

She's on the Trump 16-member transition team executive committee where
she recruits appointees with help from the Federalist Society and
Heritage Foundation

She indirectly funded publication of "Clinton Cash" a far right book that damaged Clinton's image

The Global Footprint Network estimates that our global civilization currently uses 1.6 times the resources our planet generates—that it takes 18 months, in other words, to regenerate the resources we use in one year’s time.

With no breaks in the case, the parents of Seth Rich, the DNC stffer shot to death July 10th in Washington, D.C., have held a news conference to announce that the reward for information leading to the arrest of their son's killers has risen to $125,000, the result of an additional $100,000 contributed by lobbyist Jack Burkman, who had this to say:

"D.C. is like a political fraternity, this could have happened to any
one of us, it could have happened to my republican staff, it could have
happened to my democratic staff, I have people working for me and often
in those same neighborhoods so it's just something that tugs on your
heart strings," Burkman expressed. He says he is also working on
producing a reenactment of the crime which he will pay for and hinted at
the existence of some footage from a private surveillance camera.

Joel and Mary Rich disclosed new information at their news conference: no shell casings were found at the scene, indicating that their son was shot with a revolver. The D.C. police, who evidently have no new leads, have characterized Rich's murders as a robbery, although his cell phone, watch, wallet and credit cards were found on his person.

Monday, November 21, 2016

In a new ad, Subway generously allows the possibility that Jewish-Lithuanian grocer Reuben (or maybe Reubin) Kulakofsky concocted the famous sandwich for his weekly poker games but didn't mention the location (The Fern Room at the Blackstone Hotel, here in Omaha.) More about that, and why making one with Thousand Island dressing is sacrilegious, here.

Honey badgers are known for their fearless ferocity. They even terrorize lions and elephants. Leopards are about the only animals willing to engage them one-on-one. But they have more tricks up their sleeve than sheer lunatic bravado:

1. Snake venom doesn't phase them. The diets of some U.S. honey badgers have been found to be as much as 25% venemous snakes. They're one of the few mammals for whom Cobra venom is not lethal, although it can make them sleepy.2. They have truly awful-smelling scent glands, like skunks — powerful enough to make a human's eyes water at 40 paces3. They're incredibly, unbelievably smart, in part because their mothers spend two years educating them before kicking them to the curb, so to speak. AKSARBENT saw a PBS NATURE documentary (below) about a South African who rescues honey badgers kept as pets. (Seriously.) His charge, Stoffer, kept killing other animals in his private preserve, so he decided to lock Stoffer and his girlfriend up, but they unbolted a double-bolted gate working in concert with each other, simultaneously. After various other escapes, their guardian decided to build an expensive concrete Alcatraz for them, but Stoffer climbed trees near the wall and skipped.So all the trees near the perimeter were stripped of their branches. Then Stoffer spend an entire night bending and gnawing a big branch off the sole remaining tree, in the middle of his "pen." He then dragged the branch to the corner of his pen, propped it up and escaped by running up it. So that tree got stripped too. Next morning Stoffel was nowwhere to be found, but a pile of rocks he dug up during the night were in a corner of the pen. So the rocks were taken away. That worked for a few days — until it rained. Next morning he was gone again, and in the corner of the pen was a pile of MUDBALLS he made during the night. Finally, an electric fence was installed.

In the wild, Spotted/Striped Hyenas (which eat bones) can clampw at 1100 PSI,
Saltwater crocodiles, at 7700 PSI, have the most powerful jaws of any living creature (including tigers, rhinos, grizzlies and sharks) but their jaw opening muscles are quite weak, which is why the crazed humans who wrestle them try to lock down their jaws — not hard to do, if you can ride out the thrashing.
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Source: http://forums.sherdog.com/threads/the-top-20-worlds-strongest-animal-bite-forces-measured-in-psi-new.2393047/

Sunday, November 20, 2016

Houston Alexander, a former UFC mixed martial arts fighter, is also an artist talented enough to have been offered admission to the Savannah College of Art & Design in Georgia during his senior year of high school, which he decided not to attend, as he did not want to leave behind his daughter in Omaha. He appears regularly in various incarnations on Omaha Live! He learned to fight in the rough part of St. Louis, where he spent his childhood.

Saturday, November 19, 2016

Donald Trump took to twitter recently to whine about a Hamilton audience booing his presumptive VP, Mike Pence, and some subsequent advice to him from the stage. Pence supports the use of conversion shock "therapy" to alter the sexual orientation of gays, including, we assume, those who tread the boards of Broadway theatres.
Trump should worry more about the pithy warning from the grave that Alexander Hamilton has for New Yorkers about people like himself. Via Federalist Paper #68:

These most deadly adversaries of republican government might naturally have been expected to make their approaches from more than one querter, but chiefly from the desire in foreign powers to gain an improper ascendant in our councils. How could they better gratify this, than by raising a creature of their own to the chief magistracy of the Union?

The quotation is in defense of the electoral system, of course, but only as a better alternative to election of the president by Congress. Hamilton thought an ad hoc body responsible for electing the president would be less subject to untoward pressure than office-holding representatives.
Obviously, an even better means to that end would be direct popular election of the president and the abolishment of the electoral college or simply short circuiting it via the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact thatten states have already signed on to.

Antigay IA Rep. hangs up when CBC's As It Happens asks pointed question about his Suck It Up, Buttercup bill

Rackover (right) and Dilione

James Rackover, formerly James Beaudoin, has been named as a suspect in the murder of Joseph Comunale, whose burned body was found in a shallow grave near the Jersey Shore.
Rackover, 25, and his bud, Lawrence Dilione, 28, are both charged with concealing a corpse, hindering prosecution and tampering with evidence, but not murder. Police still need to know exactly who may have stabbed Comunale to death and who may or may not have helped.
Rackover, lived in a floor four apartment in a building next door to Donald Trump Jr. His rent was subsidized by jeweler-to-the-stars (Oprah, Denzel, Trump, etc.) Jeffrey Rackover, who lived on floor 32. The elder Rackover is a friend of Donald Trump who helped him pick out Melania Trump's engagement ring. Neighbors didn't buy the dad/son pose.

'I have seen them working out together in the gym and there is no way they were father and son,' one neighbor told the DailyMail.com. Another friend saw them at a wedding and that was definitely not an appropriate father son relationship. 'The kid moved in about a year ago - Jeffrey decorated it to his liking - and apparently told people he was Jeffrey's long lost son.'And Jeffrey introduced me to him in the elevator as his son. The kid is covered in tattoos. No one thought he was Jeffrey's son.'

Murdered: Hofstra grad and
avid hockey player Joey Comunale

Comunale reportedly met James Rackover at a Meatpacking District Club, The Gilded Lily, then later went to Rackover's 59th St. condo with another man and three women, who left later, as did Comunale.
Comunale returned about 7:30 a.m. and was not seen leaving the building after that, although a man was recorded on surveillance video moving two pieces of luggage out of the building. He allegedly asked a building employee how long the condo kept security video.
Comunale, who is alleged to have turned down sex from one or more men at Rackover's apartment, was found partially burned in a shallow grave in New Jersey near Shore Point roofing, owned by Dilione.

Thursday, November 17, 2016

It's that terribly serious Robert Maplethorpe photo of the S&M couple at home. TIME said the 1979 photo "blew open the doors for a
range of photographers and artists to frankly examine gay life and
sexuality."
Not on your life.
Get over yourself, New York.
Below is the peerlessly subversive photo San Francisco photographer Crawford Barton took three years earlier, which was published in his book, Beautiful Men and which won a prize in a New Times photo contest.
Maplethorpe's photo forces a straight viewer to confront an inconvenient and unsettling truth, then stops. Crawford's California photo keeps on driving. It reassures an aghast viewer that conventional society is not under siege by sexual nonconformity.
The unwritten, but clear challenge to the viewer: Look at those squares on the stoop next to the two dudes sucking face! They couldn't care less! Do you have a problem with gays? Well, then you must be even squarer than they look.Or: Look at that successful, well-turned out, middle-aged, middle-class couple who aren't bothered at all by Teh Gay? Do you have a problem with Teh Gay? Well, then, what are you? A low-rent Duck Dynasty cracker, ferChrissakes?
Crawford's photo nailed homophobia coming or going, raised the Freak Flag, and reminded the rest of America that even San Franciscans who don't look cool, are.
Maplethorpe's New York photo is an immaculate art gallery depiction of S&M. Crawford's rowdier Golden State photo rocked 1976 Americans with a then-edgy boy/boy makeout tableau but it didn't crop out the silent majority, it cleverly enlisted them. This is why it was far more dangerous to Jesse Helms's America than anything Maplethorpe ever did; the old coot could never have attacked Crawford the way he did Maplethorpe.
Juxtaposition fuels both images, but Maplethorpe's is only 80-proof; Crawford's is White Lightning. TIME got it wrong.

Because of that, Horner places some blame on himself for getting Trump into the White House, using the example of a story about paid anti-Trump protestors that fooled former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski and, most recently, "Never Trump" Sen. Ben Sasse (R-NE). "My sites were picked up by Trump supporters all the time. I think Trump is in the White House because of me," Horner said. "His followers don’t fact-check anything — they’ll post everything, believe anything. His campaign manager posted my story about a protester getting paid $3,500 as fact. Like, I made that up. I posted a fake ad on Craigslist."

Sasse's tweet, based on the phony story, is still up, and the lie he helped spread has been retweeted 670 times as of this writing.

Wednesday, November 16, 2016

Update: Kaufmann has been convicted 17 times and was on probation when he was elected to the Iowa house in 2012.
Iowa GOP Rep. Bobby Kaufman has proposed legislation to fine Iowa collages if they spend tax dollars on what he calls "Cry Rooms" for students having trouble accepting the election of Donald Trump, according to WQAD. The bill would cut funding to schools funding election related sit-ins or grief counseling.
From WOWT:

Students and faculty at
the University of Northern Iowa gathered at three sessions to discuss
the election and their fears. University spokesman Scott Ketelsen says
no money was spent on those sessions. Students and faculty at Iowa State University
held a rally and University of Iowa student groups held their own
events. Both schools say they did not spend any extra funds on those
events.

Tuesday, the Canadian Broadcasting Company's As It Happens called Kaufmann to drill down on some of his claims, and he hung up on them. They called back, and Kaufmann said: "I don't speak to media outlets with an agenda."Here's the question Kaufmann couldn't handle:

Bobby Kaufman: I'm not ready to point fingers on specifics but I think we've all seen the reports across the entire country. We've seen them live on reports from reputable media sources. I have people reaching out to me from different states saying, hey, my kid, at this particular college today, the professor was actively discussing the possibility of bringing in a pony — a miniature pony so that people could use it to feel better about the election.Carol Off: Can I ask you where did that happen? Where was the discussion about bringing a pony to school?Bobby Kaufmann: My job is to be finding this out. I'm not prepared to name names right now. I'm doing an investigation.Carol Off: I'm not asking you to name names — just where did it happen?Bobby Kaufman: Okay… [hangs up]

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: You say that it’s very unlikely or
very rare that this pipeline might rupture, but some companies’
pipelines seem to spill more than others. And your subsidiary Sunoco Logistics has a pretty poor track record
when it comes to leaks. According to analysis done by Reuters, Sunoco
Logistics spills more crude than any of its competitors, 200 oil leaks
in the last six years.Doesn’t that safety record indicate that the concerns of the Standing Rock Tribe ought to be listened to?

Sunday, November 13, 2016

Last night Kate McKinnon appeared again as Notorious Supreme Court Justice RBG on SNL's Weekend Update and ripped Mike Pence even more viciously than Rachel Maddow did the other night when she reminded viewers of Pence's long record of Hoosier homophobia.

Colin: There are some people, like Michael Moore, too, who say that Trump might get impeached before his 4 years are even over.McKinnon, as Ruth Bader Ginsburg:Oh great, and then we'll get Pence. Then gay people can't get a pizza guy... To me [Pence] kinda looks like the neighbor who kisses Kevin Spacey in American Beauty... And Mike Pence: Sorry you looked at Magnum PI once and got a quarter-chub and you've been haunted by it ever since. And that's a Gay Ginsburg.

Sunday, November 6, 2016

Terry Kohler's deep pockets and dark money machinations helped fuel the rise of Scott Walker's Wisconsin and have kept him in office. It may or may not have been sheer coincidence that SNL trashed his company last night. From PR Watch:

Kohler is an heir to the fortune built by The Kohler Company, a toilet, faucet, and plumbing fixture manufacturer that has long had a contentious relationship with organized labor.
In 1934, Kohler security guards fired into a crowd of striking workers,
killing two and wounding 43 others, and marking a tragic landmark in
labor history. Twenty years later, in 1954, the Kohler Company's refusal
to negotiate with the union resulted in the longest strike in U.S.
history, lasting nine years.

Both the Bozeman Daily Chronicle and the Missoulian have endorsed
Denise Juneau for Montana's sole House seat.
If elected, she would be the state's
first openly gay member of Congress and the first Native American to
represent Montana.
The state's largest paper, the Billings
Gazette, has endorsed the GOP candidate, Ryan Zinke, a former Navy Seal who supports Donald
Trump.
Zinke is leading Juneau from the margin of error to 10 points,
depending on which poll you believe.

Friday, November 4, 2016

Many people don't know it, but Warren Buffett's conglomerate, Berkshire Hathaway, runs the 10th-largest newspaper chain in the country, with 31 dailies and 47 weeklies in 11 states.
The perception of Buffett, recently photographed at a rally for Hillary Clinton, is of a "liberal" billionaire. The reality is that his most influential paper, the Omaha World-Herald, is often the editorial equivalent of a voter who pulls the straight-ticket master lever to vote for GOP candidates, no matter how incompetent or troglodyte some of them are.
The Herald's corrosive political influence includes a large section of conservative northwestern Iowa, across the Missouri River from Omaha, Nebraska.
On Wednesday, the Herald urged its Iowa readers to return Supreme Court Obstructionist Sen. Charles Grassley to office, as well as Rep. David Young and Rep. Steve King, who is almost certainly the loosest cannon in the U.S. House of Representatives whose name isn't Louie Gohmert.
Before endorsing King, the Herald acknowledged that King continues to draw controversy, which is like acknowledging that Adolf Hitler was rude to Poland.
This is the best defense of King that the Heraldcould come up with:

Responding to criticism that he hasn’t offered a large number of bills,
King told The World-Herald, “It is far more important to be engaged in
killing bad ideas than to put your name on a good idea.” King has
done strong work on the farm bills as a member of the House Agriculture
Committee. He has supported renewable fuels and worked to obtain
federal earmarks to complete Highway 20. King noted that future
trade agreements will rest on the trade promotion authority Congress has
approved. He said the legislation would not have passed if not for
amendments he worked to include.

Compare the Herald's less-than-persuasive praise of the baldly homophobic, racist and chauvinistic King with the Des Moines Register's tell-it-like-it-really-is assessment of King, a lawmaker it has called "an embarrassment to the state of Iowa" and whose opponent, Kim Weaver, the Gannett paper just endorsed:

Contrast
that with her opponent in the 4th district, Rep. Steve King, who’s
infamous for talking. He’s known nationally for making outrageous
statements — on the floor of Congress, on cable TV, on talk radio, and
anywhere else he can get attention. But actually doing anything?
King has earned a reputation for being one of the least-effective
members of Congress. In seven terms in Washington, not one of the bills
he’s introduced have ever made it out of committee. Instead, he’s known
for his amendments and resolutions that ultimately go nowhere. He takes
pride in obstruction. We invited King to meet with the editorial board twice this election season, but his campaign declined. The Register instead endorses Weaver, who represents a refreshing voice in Iowa politics. She knows the challenges many Iowans face because she’s heard from them directly.

Iowans would be better off listening to their own statewide newspaper and ignoring the GOP-inspired machinations of Nebraska's.
Below are 20 good reasons to defeat Rep. Steve King (which don't include his latest remarks about the superiority of white culture and his idiot comments about Mexican immigrants with "calves the size of cantaloupes.)

20 Reasons to dump Iowa Rep. Steve King

King, a miserably ineffective showboat, sponsored 17 bills in the U.S. House, but, according to Open Congress, not one of them was enacted

In 2013 Steve King has been identified as one
of the “ten Republicans who shut down the government” (Gawker), costing the U.S. economy $24 billion.

The Des Moines Register can't stand him: "King
seems to amuse himself by being as partisan and vitriolic as he can be.
He has had 10 years in Washington to cultivate his inner-statesman, but
he has failed to do so. It’s time for Iowa to make a change." (Written in 2012)

The right-wing editorial page of the Omaha, Nebraska World-Herald endorsed King

Voted to expand internet surveillance of users by forcing Internet Service Providers to retain customers' temporarily-assigned IP addresses, as well as other information, for 12 months

Voted for
a $250,000 congressional publicity stunt/nonbinding resolution to
encourage public display of "In God We Trust" and to affirm that
divisive religious bumper-sticker slogan which replaced E Pluribus Unum (Out of many, one), the US' original motto

Played hookey from the House
to whine at CPAC about Nancy Pelosi forcing him to use energy-saving
lightbulbs in his office while the rest of Iowa's congressional
delegation was on the job fighting to protect Iowa National Guard jobs

Was called an embarrassment to Iowa by the state's largest
newspaper, in its 2010 endorsement of opponent Matt Campbell. The Des
Moines Register added
that King was "provocative, not focused on getting results for
Iowans... reactive, not visionary" and added that it was time for Iowa
voters to replace him

Thursday, November 3, 2016

As Nebraska's wealthy TD Ameritrade scion, Gov. Pete Ricketts, partied with fellow owners of the Cubs in Chicago (the new headquarters of formerly Omaha-based ConAgra), we noted that his family-funded Future45 PAC is dumping millions into new anti-Hillary attack ads on the Internet and airwaves in at least five closely contested states in order to bolster Donald Trump's campaign. One is a bizarre rap:

One is pitched at Hispanics:

Another one pretends to be worried about the plight of LGBTs — in other countries. As governor, Pete Ricketts has adamantly opposed marriage equality in Nebraska, though not in Illinois, where he attended his sister Laura's gay wedding in Chicago.

Maynard (Bob "Gilligan's Island" Denver) slyly flashes a nipple to the CBS eye while trying to talk his best buddy Dobie Gillis (Dwayne Hick­man) into taking off all his clothes. Whoever said 1950s television was a vast waste­land obviously didn't know where to look.